There are various successful advertising methods employed over the Internet. Most of these include paid search engine ranking and advertisements, search engines that award prizes to its users, text ads or banner ads on websites, and pop-up/pop-under ads. These ads may be based on a search term or content of a web page where an ad is displayed. These ads are not formatted as questions used to engage a participant and entice them to research a question and submit an answer.
The common form of current Internet ads are known to be susceptible to click fraud since no action other than clicking on an advertisement is required from a participant for an advertiser to be charged. Using a question based advertisement allows the option of only charging advertisers for participants who submit any answer or a correct answer, thus requiring further action from a participant and hindering fraudulent charges to advertisers.
Television stations currently use prerecorded advertisements to pay for their broadcasting costs and make profit. With the impending distribution of interactive television that will result in television broadcast reception devices to effectively act like, if not become, networked computers, there is opportunity for using content based questions to entice a participant to research a question and submit an answer.
There are also stand-alone networked terminal systems that may use standard or proprietary protocols for communication between those terminals. Terminals such as those could also be used for content based questions to entice a participant to research a question's answer. A question may be based on other information a participant has accessed on a terminal or based on the physical surroundings of a terminal. This type of terminal may be found in restaurants, bars, arcades, casinos, or other locations.
For Internet advertising, ads based on search engine results or web page content have been used. These ads have not been questions used to entice visitors to research and learn more about a product or service in order to correctly answer the question. Television advertising is also passive, with predetermined commercials occurring in predetermined time slots. They have not used a participant's television show preferences or a particular television show's current content to provide question based advertisements that would appeal to a participant, entice them to research a product or service, and submit an answer to the question.
There is a need for an advertising method that engages the consumer by taking into consideration the consumers interests or surroundings, and provides educated consumers to the advertisers.